Last Resort reaches the end of the road tonight with a subdued finale to what, just four months ago, looked like one of network TV’s more promising new dramas. In all, 13 episodes will have aired. That’s more than most new series cancelled out of the gate, but that will be small comfort to both those viewers who saw something appealing in Last Resort’s pilot episode and those viewers who noticed that since Last Resort’s return on Jan. 10 after a month’s absence, the episodes showed marked improvement.

They were leaner, tougher, faster.

The good news about tonight’s finale is that the producers were given enough lead time to wrap up the story of a nuclear-submarine crew trapped in a military standoff on a remote Indian Ocean island. The finale involves a final battle for control of the Colorado, pitting crew member against crew member and leaving the sub vulnerable to take over by a shadowy third party. By now, Capt. Marcus Chaplin (Andre Braugher) and his XO Sam Kendal (Scott Speedman) see eye-to-eye and are working in sync to rein in the chaos and restore order. Since nuclear immolation would be a cynical way to end Last Resort — it’s network TV, after all, not cable — it’s a safe bet that their hard-luck captain and his XO will win hearts and minds in the end, and while they won’t all live happily ever after, they will live.

Behind the scenes, what really happened with Last Resort speaks volumes about the state of network TV today.

Ratings were not terrific, but they were not a disaster either. Cancellation was not solely a result of sinking ratings.

Last Resort was an expensive show to make — it was filmed in Hawaii, not on a studio back lot in Hollywood — but it was not that expensive. Cancellation was not solely a result of spiralling costs.

It was a combination of factors that led to Last Resort’s demise, not the least of which, was branding.

Last Resort airs on Global TV in Canada, but its parent network is ABC, in the U.S. ABC has achieved much of its success of late by focusing on women viewers. And Last Resort, with its action underpinnings, he-man cast and macho swagger, had little appeal to women. The ratings were never bad, but what they did indicate was that the audience skewed heavily male. Few if any woman watched.

That’s important, ABC Entertainment president Paul Lee told reporters at this month’s meeting of the TV Critics Association in Los Angeles. Last Resort was “off brand.” Being scheduled directly opposite NFL football on Thursday nights, on one of the most crowded, competitive TV nights of the week, didn’t boost its chances among male voters either: The irony is that, now that the regular season NFL is over, Last Resort could conceivably have seen a jump in ratings.

But not with women.

“I may be proven wrong about this but if we do shows that guys like and women don’t want to come to, then that doesn’t work for us,” Lee admitted. “If we do shows that women like and men love — Shark Tank is an example; Once Upon a Time is an example — then we really have a crack at breaking through the clutter. If we ever do a show that puts a ‘Do Not Enter’ sign up to women, that doesn’t work for anyone. It needs to be relatable. You need to be able to imagine yourself in a show, and imagine yourself as those protagonists. We have to deliver to women as well as men when we do a show.”

The submarine in Last Resort was sunk by testosterone, in other words. That, and bad timing. It was never the show.

That will be cold comfort to anyone who watched from the beginning, of course, but at least tonight’s finale will provide some kind of closure. That isn’t always the case with network TV dramas, especially those cancelled after just one season. (ABC, Global, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to See

• Last Resort isn’t the only network drama to experience erratic scheduling: Viewers these days practically need a GPS to keep track of what shows air where, and when. Glee returns tonight with the first new episode since Dec. 13, an outing that features the school’s first Sadie Hawkins dance and the return of Lea Michele and Chris Colfer in their first appearances since their dual Peoples Choice Award wins for favourite comedy actress and actress. Glee is more musical than comedy, of course — it’s about as funny as Les Misérables — but that’s just nitpicking. (Global, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• 30 Rock continues to wind down the clock on its Jan. 31 finale with tonight’s outing, A Goon’s Deed in a Weary World, in which Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) tries to save TGS from cancellation, while Kenneth the Page (Jack McBrayer) helps Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) pick a new network president. And why not? These days, a page can’t possibly do any worse than the so-called media consultants. (Citytv, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• The boss gets his hands dirty, literally, in this week’s Undercover Boss Canada, as the show goes undercover with Orkin Canada president Gary Muldoon as he learns firsthand what his frontline employees deal with on a daily basis as they try to battle mother nature with whatever’s at hand. (W Network, 9 ET/PT)

National TV columnist for Postmedia News Network.
Two solitudes:
“My dream is to have a bank of TVs where all the different channels are on at the same time and I can be monitoring them,” the social... read more critic Camille Paglia told Wired magazine, back in the day, before Big Brother and before Survivor. “I love the tabloid stuff. The trashier the program is, the more I feel it’s TV.”
And then there’s this, from Gilligan’s Island creator Sherwood Schwartz: “There’s a lot of underlying philosophy to the characters on Gilligan’s Island. They’re really a metaphor for the nations of the world, and their purpose was to show how nations have to get along together . . . or cease to exist.”
There you have it, then. The trashier a program is, the more it’s like TV. Or, if you prefer, TV is a metaphor for the nations of the world, and Gilligan’s Island was really a message about why we don’t all get along.
That’s where I come in.
My first TV memory was of being menaced by a Dalek on Doctor Who — the original, scratchy, black-and-white Who.
My more recent TV memories include the Sopranos finale; 9/11; Elvis Costello’s first appearance (and temporary banishment) on Saturday Night Live; what was really inside the Erlenmeyer flask in The X-Files; Law & Order (the original, and those iconic chimes); glued to the set at 3am local time during the 2003 war in Iraq — TV’s first real-time war —and Bart Simpson scrawling on the chalkboard in The Simpsons’ opening credits: “I Must Not Write All Over the Walls.”
Other Bart-isms, as seen on that TV chalkboard over the years: “I Will Never Win an Emmy,” “I No Longer Want My MTV,” and, pointedly — if a little hopefully — “Network TV is Not Dead.”
I was there to witness "the new dawn of the sitcom" in the mid-1990s, followed — inevitably — by the glut of terrible sitcoms in the early naughts, a glut that led, directly and indirectly, to the rise of reality TV.
There’s been a lot to talk about — good, bad and indifferent — about TV over the years.
That’s where you, and this space, come in. Read on. Enjoy, feel free to agree, disagree and dispute whenever you want. TV may be ugly at times, but it's a mirror of democracy in action. A funhouse mirror at times, a sober reflection at others.View author's profile